Members of the Jewish community in Geneva, Switzerland, woke up on
Friday morning and discovered that anti-Semitic symbols had been
sprayed overnight on a monument to Holocaust victims who had lived in
the city, according to a Channel 2 News report.

The report said that symbols had also been sprayed on the outer wall
of a local synagogue.

Dr. Yitzhak Dayan, the Chief Rabbi of Geneva, told Channel 2 News
that he believed the timing of the incident was not accidental.

“Yesterday we celebrated here Israel´s Independence Day. There was a
party organized by the Israeli Embassy in the UN in one of the
largest hotel in town, “he said.

He added that after the incident “there was another celebration, this
time initiated by the Jewish community. Right in the middle of the
party we heard that wing extremists and anti-Semites sent us a ‘gift’
on the occasion of Independence Day - swastikas on the memorial to
Holocaust victims.”

Rabbi Dayan noted that local Jews were also horrified to discover
swastikas sprayed on the front of the largest Sephardic synagogue in
the city. One Jewish community leader in Geneva was as saying: “We
are outraged at the anti-Semitic rage act which came exactly a week
after Yom Hashoah.”

Rabbi Dayan noted that in the local community members intend to file
a formal complaint to police about the incident, adding that he
believed that “the security cameras in the area will help us to find
the people responsible for this crime and hold them accountable.”

Last month, a similar incident occurred when a Holocaust memorial was
vandalized in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

A recent report has shown that there has been an increase in the
number of recorded anti-Semitic incidents in Switzerland.